


Scarab

by OxfordOctopus



Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [18]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow, RWBY
Genre: Emotions, Faunus Taylor Hebert, Gen, Led by Pyrrha, Taylor replaced Jaune, Team Bonding, Team Platinum, or - Freeform, the team name is PLTN
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 06:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23040244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: Post-GM Taylor ends up in Remnant up a pair of bug wings and a semblance and sans her original powers.Also known as: the life and times of people who have to deal with Taylor's bullshit.
Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1435474
Comments: 13
Kudos: 151





	Scarab

**Author's Note:**

> Taylor's last name being Berta is my attempt to give her access to the color name rule without making it too... glaring, if you get my thinking.

Pyrrha wasn’t really sure how to feel about Taylor. Of all the odd things she’d experienced after venturing out of Argus, Taylor was perhaps the most distinct among them; a girl with what seemed like no real past, a fatalistic mindset, all paired off with some of the most distinct features she’d even seen on a Faunus: a pair of broad, golden scarab beetle wings.

This, naturally, was an issue. Not the being a Faunus bit, but rather how little she knew about Taylor.

It wasn’t like Pyrrha _ intended _ for their relationship to end up this way. She was the leader of her team, and that team _ included _ Taylor, for better or for worse. The fact of the matter was that ‘figuring out Taylor’ wasn’t a  _ side-project _ , this wasn’t something to be done for fun, it was necessary to continue the advancement of team dynamics and to ensure that when it came time to hunt Grimm, she could structure their team to best work as a single unit.

The issue was that Taylor wasn’t  _ cold, _ or some other definable antisocial behavior she could identify and curtail. Of the two other members of her and Taylor’s team, consisting of Ren and Nora, she was just the least personable, and perhaps the most distant. Taylor didn’t isolate herself or anything, nor did the three of them try to isolate  _ her _ , but there was a palpable, impersonal divide between them. She’d tried looking for clues, of course, and had initially thought it was jealousy, or an assumption that Taylor would do better than Pyrrha, but there was no real evidence of that.

No, Taylor didn’t seem like a person for petty jealousy or spite. What Taylor  _ actually _ reminded her of was her mother. Celosia Nikos had been her family’s sole hunter in the last four or five generations - her father was an architect and fort constructor, first and foremost, even if he had learned to use a gun out of necessity - and while she had retired after taking a particularly bad wound to her foot, giving her a painful hobble, she had never quite grown out of her habits. It wasn’t that Mom wasn’t  _ nice _ or  _ polite _ , but there was an air of, for lack of a better word,  _ duty _ . Clinically made beds, a regimented lifestyle, an adherence to some sort of invisible set of parameters and rules which require everything be neat and tidy and awake by five thirty in the morning.

Taylor was very similar.

Her bed was always perfectly made, she was never vulnerable, not really. She had an unnatural grasp over her response to things, even if discussions with Ren had made it perfectly clear that she was nowhere  _ near _ as immune to emotions as she liked to present herself to be. In training, Taylor worked well with others, but never overextended, never truly gave over trust for someone else to get what was needed done, which usually meant she planned reactively instead of proactively. It might have something to do with her semblance - something that, itself, had to be gradually coaxed out over the last couple of weeks, Taylor’s insistence that she will never use it worn down by the grim reality of daily combat - and how being able to use people’s and Grimm’s senses as her own, as well as puppet them directly if she focused, might skew someone’s perception, but that was a  _ workable _ problem and as a consequence it also seemed to be an incorrect assumption. Aside from her own vehemence about only using it in necessary circumstances, Taylor showed no real signs of having been influenced by long-term use of her semblance, nor did it appear that she relied on it to cope.

Pyrrha couldn’t help it, she groaned. She was stuck, completely and utterly stuck, when it came to Taylor Berta, the third member of Team PLTN, or Team Platinum.

Not for the first time, Pyrrha wondered what happened to the blonde boy she’d seen on the trip over, and if her life might’ve been more simple with someone so...  _ innocent _ . Someone with clearly defined goals and desires, instead of Taylor, whose goals and habits were hidden behind a stiff jaw and a habit of waking up before Pyrrha herself did, which meant somewhere near four to four thirty in the morning.

_ Ah, well. _ There was no use crying over spilt milk, especially when the milk was metaphorical.

The door to their shared dormitory opened, drawing Pyrrha’s gaze away from her journal. Nora slipped in with a cheeky smile, a finger rising up to press vertically against her lips, the universal sign of silence. A rock dropped into Pyrrha’s stomach, because she’d seen Nora  _ that _ giddy all of two other times and both of them included an ultraviolent reprisal against a training dummy that had gotten her, on both occasions, slapped with a warning about destruction of school property.

Nora, however, seemed less than worried, her smile creeping further across her face as she first shut the door and then slipped to the side of the door, specifically the side that the door opened away from. Making another ‘shh’ gesture, she crouched down and looked to ready herself, plastering her back against the wall and adopting a stance that looked vaguely like a sprinter’s stance, top half of her body low, legs tensed, fingers splayed and prepared to lever any movement she made.

Pyrrha opened her mouth to ask what exactly happened, but never got the chance. The door to their room less swung, more ripped itself open, slamming into the wall. “ _ Nora! _ ” was yelled, a sharp, angry, but mostly  _ flustered _ noise, one that Pyrrha was already somewhat familiar with when it came to Nora’s victims. No, what made that noise important was that  _ it came from Taylor _ . Taylor, who Pyrrha had only ever heard speak in a restrained, if not monotone, voice, Taylor, who held her composure like Pyrrha held her weapon,  _ Taylor _ , who had looked Cardin down in the middle of another racist rant, and said nothing, while still managing to not seem submissive. Taylor, who was currently wearing what looked like half of a pumpkin pie, baking tin included, more than a little whipped cream, and a mask of indignant near-fury. Taylor’s eyes, bright gold with green flecks hidden just beneath, a consequence of her aura if Ozpin was to be believed, snapped towards where Nora was crouching.

Nora bolted like a startled gazelle, vanishing into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Taylor wasn’t having it. “ _ Nora _ , I swear to  _ fuck _ you let me in there!” She was already starting forward, raising one hand to pound on the wooden surface of the door.

Speaking of doors, Pyrrha glanced towards the main door to their dormitory and found it occupied by five other people, the entire RWBY team and Ren, all peeking around the corner. Ruby, the leader of the team and an all-around pleasant and mercifully uncomplicated girl, what with the sudden influx of  _ tremendously _ complicated people in her life, looked a bit sympathetic, but almost vividly satisfied. Yang, by contrast, was gleeful, barely restrained so that it was just the occasional snort and the ever-present shuddering of her shoulders. Blake looked... Passively interested? Curious, more than anything else, eyes flashing from Pyrrha to the other members of the room.  _ Checking to see if any of us are being malicious about it? _ Maybe, but Pyrrha did wonder why she thought that was necessary. Weiss was her own type of amused, though Pyrrha quickly noticed it was that, well, a very  _ posturing _ ‘amused’, the sort of thing she’d seen when meeting people who funded the tournaments, a superiority to the cast of her gaze and the way she covered her mouth with a proffered hand. Lastly, Ren was as Ren was won't to be: placid, if with a smile touching his expression, looking serene even to the backdrop of continued threats and damage to the bathroom door.

Filtering out the sounds of property damage, Pyrrha inched towards the peeping group, Ruby catching sight of her and letting out an ‘eep!’. Other heads turned towards her, and Pyrrha did her best to keep her face neutral, even if only to get more insight on what exactly prompted Taylor to break character so strongly when, even if she didn’t like to admit it, Pyrrha had been wondering if that really was all there  _ was _ to Taylor: a possible child-soldier with signs of PTSD but an unwillingness to ever talk about her issues.

“So,” Pyrrha started, wincing at a particularly loud bang in the background. “What brought this on?”

Of all the people to speak, Weiss wasn’t the one Pyrrha would’ve put her money on. “Well, Taylor was brooding”— _ did Taylor brood? Huh _ —“and being unresponsive like normal while studying in the library. Ruby wanted to play some games and  _ tried _ to invite Taylor, but she didn’t respond, and, well.”

Oh? Was Weiss  _ defending _ Ruby? That was certainly an improvement to what Weiss had treated Ruby the last time Pyrrha had been near the two of them. Ruby would probably be unhappy if someone just ignored her attempts at friendship, and so it did make sense if this was some sort of retribution, but then...

“How did Nora get involved?”

Weiss blinked. “It wasn’t like  _ we _ were the ones to do it,” she confided after a moment’s pause. “It’s more like we decided not to comment when Nora saw Ruby’s face, turned back around, and came back a few minutes later with a pie.”

“They had an argument,” Ruby picked up, sounding a touch awkward. “After she pied her, I mean. Nora yelled a bit, Taylor got  _ suuuper _ angry,  really scary too , and then we got kicked out of the library.”

“What were they yelling  _ about _ , exactly?” This could be a way to help fix the dynamics on her team, to further incorporate Taylor when she’d been so unresponsive to previous attempts. She needed to at  _ least _ try, try to find any way to connect with Taylor, any at all.

Blake shrugged. “Something about needing to relate to people and get along, and that being anti-social was ‘anti-fun’.”

Well, at least Nora could get to the heart of an issue like that. Pyrrha wasn’t about to complain, even if she saw a visit from the dormitory supervisor in her near-future for the racket and possible property damage. She’d deal with it, and really, even if her entire team ended up in detention, she’d absolutely do it again to see anything but placid acquiescence on Taylor’s face.

“Anyway, they kinda calmed down in the hallway afterwards?” Ruby started off again, which was a surprise, considering Pyrrha had assumed that everything after was the rush to get here. “Taylor stopped yelling and they talked, I didn’t overhear any of it, and at the end Taylor looked more... Approachable? Anyway, Nora went in for a hug and pied her in the back of the head. I don’t know where she  _ kept  _ the second pie, but I’m pretty sure everyone in Beacon knows the full extent of Taylor’s rage right about now.”

Something in the bathroom door gave with a pained crunch, slumping in on itself with a crash. Nora’s pleas became fully vocal as Taylor shouldered her way through the wreckage of both the door and PLTN’s reputation, the ominous creaking and snapping noises accompanied by Nora rapidly begging Taylor ‘not to do anything rash’ and ‘to think about the children’.

There was a shifting noise and then the rush of the shower head turning on. Something tumbled, hitting the ceramic surface of the shower with a bang, accompanied by shrill squealing and a fair amount of giggling, before everything but the shower went silent.

“Did... Did Taylor just kill Nora?” Ruby squeaked out.

Everyone in the room - besides Weiss, who looked to have been thinking something similar, but had been smart enough not to vocalize it - turned and stared at Ruby with a  _ look _ .

Leaving the group to have its bonding moment, Pyrrha paced over towards the doorway, avoided the wooden shrapnel, and stepped into the now-foggy confines of the bathroom. Inside, Nora was bent over Taylor’s head, helping to comb through her hair to remove what bits of pie they could find. The shower’s stream of water only hit most of its mark, the rest of it buffeting a mixture of Nora, the floor, and the bathtub.

“—ou can’t just do that to someone, I really like my hair,” Taylor mumbled, which itself was a novel idea: mumbling, from  _ Taylor _ . Stoic, perfect image of a soldier Taylor,  _ mumbling _ . She had to withhold a somewhat-hysterical giggle from the internal image of a five-year old Taylor in soldier fatigues far too big for her body.

“Yeah, yeah, but you’ll be better this time, right?” Nora, uncharacteristically, wasn’t speaking loudly like she normally did, always announcing her presence even when she probably shouldn’t. Instead, her voice was... Not  _ soothing _ , but something close, and quiet. Without being strained by incessant yelling, she actually had quite the soft voice.

Taylor made a wordless noise of complaint, or at least something approximating it, as Nora deposited another dollop of soap into her hair. “Okay,” was what Taylor finally said, voice a bit shaky, almost hopeful. Nora beamed a bright, far-too-loud smile, before continuing her ministrations, either uncaring or unaware that her shirt was, at this point, completely soaked through and was currently redirecting a sizable portion of the shower’s spray onto the floor, leaking like a faucet.

Stepping back out of the bathroom before it got her shoes wet, Pyrrha huffed out a breath. Ren, from his place on his bed, shot her a kindly smile, whereas the RWBY team were currently arguing over... What sounded like the specifics of turning pies into viable artillery. Pyrrha, if only for her own sanity, tuned them out.

Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.

Sure, they still had to make up for lost time, but Taylor opening up to Nora was good! ...Even if it meant that Nora might drag Taylor into her own shenanigans in an effort to further bond with her, or to get along otherwise. That wasn’t  _ great _ , especially when you considered that Taylor had a highly-weaponized prosthetic arm and a machete that could also be a knife or a pistol that fired high-caliber shotgun slugs, not to mention her capacity for flight, but...

Well.

Maybe Ren could be a soothing presence in Taylor’s life too?


End file.
